


a thief on the wing

by astroturfwars



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Guns, Improbable Amounts of Knives, M/M, Overwatch AU, Victor is a showboat, Violence, rating to go up in the future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-15 20:23:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9255038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astroturfwars/pseuds/astroturfwars
Summary: When Yuuri is thirteen, Victor Nikiforov, callsign Legend, is his hero. When Yuuri is twenty-three, he gets the chance to become his own hero, with Legend by his side.Eventually, they save each other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the Overwatch AU that absolutely no one asked for. This will eventually contain depictions of violence, and will also feature gratuitous amounts of me making up technology as needed. The rating will adjust accordingly. 
> 
> The title is taken from Cuckoo Song, by A Silent Film. Art is by the ever-lovely [cloven.](http://cloven.tumblr.com/)

 

Screams.

A panicked crowd rumbled like stampeding cattle through the streets of a snow-dusted Russian city. Bodies broke on each other like waves. Behind them the flicker of teal-blue and light on metal glimmered ten-fold, familiar and chilling, as a group of omnics darted through the streets after them. 

_“Police are advising all residents to leave the affected area. If you are in the following areas, please—wait a moment—”_

An omnic at the fringe of the group jerked backward. For a moment it stood, wavering, suspended, and then fell. The omnic next to it raised its weapon—and it fell, too, slumped across the body of the one beside it.

“ _—Is that—”_  

One omnic bolted back the way it had come. Twenty feet later, it went skidding into a trash can at the corner of the street. The omnics remaining were frenzied, panicked, firing into the air. 

“— _a hero—?”_

One by one, they all dropped.

“ _Everyone please remain calm. The area is safe. It appears the omnics have been neutralized by an unidentified person. Please bear with us as we investigate.”_  

The footage shook. Faces blurred; the sky blinked in and out of focus. After a few moments of confusion the image stilled again, this time wavering—no, now focused on a van whose owner was blinking up at it, dumbfounded. And on top of the van, suit gleaming black and silver, as long and as slender as the sniper rifle he steadied, was— 

“Legend!” Yuuri crowed, pumping his fists in the air. He peeled himself away from the screen far enough to read the ticker tape scrolling across the bottom: _Victor Nikiforov, callsign Legend, defeats gang of omnics in solo attack._ “Did you see that?” 

Yuuko chewed on her knuckles, wide-eyed. “He’s so cool,” she breathed. The glow of the news channel washed her face in blue. “I wanna save people like that one day.” 

Her eyes were so bright, and she was so kind; Yuuri couldn’t imagine a future in which Yuuko didn’t save someone, somehow. “You will!” And then: “And I will, too!” 

Yuuko grinned. “We could be heroes together! You and me and Nishigori, too!” 

Nishigori seemed more like a bully than a future hero sometimes, but Yuuri didn’t say that. “Yeah,” he said instead, “we could be like Overwatch!”

“We could be _in_ Overwatch!” Yuuko corrected him. She put her finger up in the air and said, smiling, “Come on, Yuuri, you have to think big if you wanna be a hero!”

Overwatch. The thought was huge in Yuuri’s head. Full of heroes in cool suits who always got the bad guys and never broke a sweat, Overwatch seemed more like a blockbuster or a fairy tale than anything like the organization his mother always tried to tell him it was. Organizations were boring; Overwatch was cool, and all of the heroes were even cooler—especially _Legend_. Legend was the best hero anyone had seen in years, according to Yuuri’s mother, and definitely the coolest hero Yuuri had ever seen _ever_. He was only seventeen, but he was already fighting bad guys and omnics practically everywhere, and he had the _coolest_ uniform, and Yuuko said he could shoot a hole through a sake cup from a hundred feet away, and he never messed up, and— 

“I’m home!” 

Yuuri twisted around in place to look at his mother as she stepped out of her shoes, lifting the grocery bags to see where she nudged them. “Mom, did you—welcome home!—did you see? Legend beat up a bunch of omnics just now!”

“Oh, good,” his mother said as she passed through the sitting room and into the kitchen. Over the thunk-and-rustle of grocery bags on countertop, she added, “It seems like there have been a lot of incidents lately. I hope it doesn’t mean anything too bad.”

She was missing the point. Yuuri waved toward the TV. “Mom! _Legend_!” 

“I saw him, and I think he’s just wonderful. Yuuri, if you don’t sit further back from the TV, you’ll have to wear glasses forever. You too, Yuuko.” 

Yuuri scooted back an inch, and then another when Yuuko sat back and patted the spot next to her, looking toward the kitchen with big eyes. “I can’t wear glasses forever,” he reminded her. “I’m going to be a hero when I grow up! Heroes don’t wear glasses!” 

“Is that so?” Her voice was smiling. “Well, make sure you eat everything you’re supposed to, then—and don’t get so close to the television! How can you shoot like Legend if you can’t see?” 

He would find a way. Yuuri clenched his fist. On the television screen Legend was smiling and flashing the peace sign at reporters. The top half of his face was blurred behind his gold-lined visor, but what Yuuri could see was like something out of a movie poster: the cool flashy suit, the casual stance Legend leaned into like he had just been taking a walk on a nice day, the way he smiled, big and bright, like he was never sad or scared or nervous or anything but happy.

Yuuri would smile like that too, one day. He was going fight side by side with Legend; he just knew it.

 

—

 

Yuuri would never fight again. 

It was a thought he let himself indulge in more often than he should, and a thought that took him by force more often than he wanted. Months ago it had been a mantra ingrained so deep into his head it felt like a brand, but nowadays it mostly just popped up when he had a free moment and a little bit of encouragement from the nasty voice inside his head that never quite let things go. This time around it came to him as he laid in bed in the late afternoon, staring up at the ceiling, timing how long he could go without blinking before his eyes fluttered shut on their own. 

 _You’ll never fight again_. 

The world fuzzed around the edges.

Yuuri closed his eyes. Braced himself. Tested out the way it felt to imagine that he really would never fight again, that all he would ever be was what he was now: one of the dime-a-dozen heroes active in the world right now and one of the hundreds of thousands of failures. An ordinary face in an ordinary and disappointing crowd. Never anything more; never anything less. 

It was a blade to the heart. Yuuri ached.

He took a deep, shuddering breath; imagined a wall between himself and that emotion; and tried again. He _probably_ wouldn’t fight again. After all, there would be so much to do if he wanted to be in fighting shape even just by fall, the insurmountable task of restoring people’s faith in him aside: he would have to get his tactical suit upgraded, do endless amounts of training, renew his hero registration, get—

Yuuri snapped upright. Hero registration. What day was it? He’d renewed his registration in…May, last year, he remembered, and exhaled hard. It was mid-April now—or was it late April? It was hard to be sure without checking. The days blurred together when he felt like this: pinned to his bed like a butterfly to a board, a squirming, trapped thing, caged in and waiting to die.

The phantom taste of blood soured in Yuuri’s mouth. Pain echoed in his ribs. For a moment there was a ringing in his ears that pulsed in time with his heartbeat; for a moment he felt hot metal searing his skin. 

Yuuri knew what it was like to wait to die. This was not it. This was a slow rot—and Yuuri would not let it grow.

He got out of bed. He put on a clean set of workout clothes. He knelt and reached under his bed and tugged out the roll of cloth whose weight he knew intimately and vitally. He allowed himself a moment to sit, and to _be_ —and then he put on his shoes and ran after the feeling burning in the center of his chest.

 

—

 

Yuuri knew the way to Hasetsu’s only gym by head and by heart. At his peak it was a eleven-minute run; today it took him sixteen, and by the time he staggered his way to the top of the stairs outside the gym he could name at least five places he’d be sore tomorrow morning. 

It didn’t occur to him until he was pushing through the front doors that Yuuko would be there—but there she was, behind the front desk, turning to greet him like the months of silence between them had never existed, like she’d never watched his greatest exercise in failure on live television. 

“Oh—Yuuri!” Her eyes were friendly, soft. She waved at him, a weight clip in her hand. “You’re back! It’s good to see you again.” 

Yuuko had been good at cheering Yuuri up when they were kids. She’d always known how to smile so that Yuuri had no choice but to smile back, to perk up, and she gave him that smile now: older, wiser, but just as sweet, just as real. 

Yuuri mustered up a smile for her in return. He was happy to see her—how could he not be?—but embarrassment clung to him like a lover. He was Hasetsu’s hero, their darling, and that meant that whenever he fought anyone who was awake was watching him. That meant that everyone—his mother, his father, Minako, Yuuko, _everyone_ —had seen him fail. They’d seen him fall to his knees and look up into the barrel of a gun and—

“Yuuri?” 

His fists were clenched. Pain hummed there. Yuuri uncurled his fingers. He flexed them, and did not look at the pink half-moons he knew would be dug into his palms. “Oh, sorry. I was just thinking. Uh, would you mind if I—“

“Train?” Yuuko asked. She bit back a smile and added, “Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“No, you were right. I won’t stay too late, if that’s okay…?”

Yuuko grinned. “Of course! I usually close up for lunch around one, so I’ll be here for a bit. Let me know if you need anything, okay? I think I have clean lifting gloves in your size.”

The weight of his bag was comforting on his hip, if not a little sharp. Yuuri had everything he needed, mostly. His brain tugged him in the direction of self-deprecation, but he stood his ground. “Thanks, Yuuko. I’ll see you later.” 

She hummed and gestured for him to head back into the gym proper. Down familiar hallways Yuuri went, past locker rooms and bathrooms and the yoga room that probably hadn’t been touched since he was last in town, toward the double doors at the end of the hall. They were imposing, somehow; bigger than they’d been before, or more scarred, maybe. They looked like they kept in something dark and menacing; they looked like they kept out people who couldn’t push their way in. 

Yuuri made himself take a step toward them. One, and then two, and then another, and then he made himself open the door and stepped into darkness. 

It took two more steps for the lights to come on. A couple months ago Yuuko had had the gym converted to motion-sensitive lighting. The place was a relic, she’d laughed, and with all the new technology out there, she could at least keep up with what had been the standard sixty years ago. 

It was a relic, but it was Yuuri’s second home. He knew the sweat-and-iron smell of it, the direction of the airflow, the particular way sound echoed back at him, starch and taut, every time he moved. He knew the way the matting felt under his feet through shoes, and when he took them off and pressed his bare feet to the floor he found it the same as he remembered, too: smooth and firm, the kind of material that maddest easy for him to be quiet.

The floor was cool. Yuuri flexed his toes against it. Reminded himself that this was casual, and that the only pressure to be had was what he put on himself. Still his heart fluttered, quick with adrenaline. Even with no one here, clarity was easier said than done.

Punching bags watched him in silent formation; rows of medicine balls and weights stood sentinel as Yuuri passed them, quiet as the moon. Years ago, when Yuuri was small, Minako had taught him to walk so lightly grass wouldn’t bend beneath his feet. The heel-to-toe roll of his stride and the shift of his weight were muscle memory now, a familiar trigger that set his heart to rolling and sharpened his mind. The world narrowed to this room, and then narrowed further still, to the feeling whispering in Yuuri’s bones and the bag on his back and the training dummies before him, pale soldiers fanned out in a semicircle in the corner. 

Yuuri stopped. Set down his bag. Pulled out of it the gently clinking roll of cloth, and knelt to spread it out across the floor.

First things first, though. Yuuri pulled the mess of straps and cases out of his bag. They were caught up on each other, nearly as tangled as the perpetual knot of his earbuds, but he shook his thigh holsters loose without too much trouble. The calf holsters were a little trickier since they had two straps each; one he untangled easily enough, but the other was knotted up in his belt, and he had to pick them apart.

He laid them out just below the length of cloth, and then, one by one, pulled out his knives.

They gleamed hellos at him in turn. Yuuri recognized the weight of each one intimately, instinctively. The sturdy heft of the seven-inch blades, the comforting weight of the eight-inch, the lively four-inch throwing knives—they slid home into their holsters like a dream, grips warming under Yuuri’s touch. 

The motions were routine once he’d laid his holsters out. Calf holsters first; then thigh holsters, which bit into his legs even on the loosest notch; then the holster at his hips; and finally the back piece, a tight reminder to keep his shoulders straight. Yuuri shifted his weight from foot to foot. It didn’t feel like it had been months since he’d last been fully armed, but rather minutes—long ones, to be sure, but minutes nonetheless. He felt balanced. He felt sure. He felt—comfortable. 

Yuuri was comfortable, and he was ready.

He turned toward the dummy targets—and threw himself to the floor. 

Alarm bells rang in his head. There was no one in here; the motion-sensitive lights had been off when Yuuri had come in, and he hadn’t seen anyone when they’d turned on. There was no way someone else could be in the gym with him.

But Yuuri knew what he had seen.

Movement.

Silence pressed into his ears. His head was an echo chamber for the rapid-fire beat of his heart. But waited, and he saw nothing; heard nothing save for the steady hum of the air conditioning unit; felt nothing, even in the tooth-and-claw part of him that was responsible for instinct and gut feeling.

 _It must have just been my imagination_ , Yuuri thought, and pushed himself up off the ground dusted himself off. He must have just overreacted because his nerves were oversensitive; it wouldn’t be the first time.

He turned back toward the training dummies to—

There it was again. Movement.

Yuuri froze in place this time, searching with eyes only. The punching bags on the easter wall were sort of human-shaped, but not moving; there were replacement training dummies in a pile in the far corner, also not moving; there was a squat rack with a mirror behind it on the opposite side of the room, and when Yuuri shifted to look around the rest of the room something moved with him behind the rack.

Relief washed Yuuri out. Across the room, his reflection sighed and gave him a jerky weak-wristed wave back. He looked ridiculous, even in the mirror—Yuuri could only imagine how he must have looked in real life.

 _Perfect_ , Yuuri thought. Embarrassment prickled at him. He snorted. _How fitting_.

It was a sad thing, to look at himself in the mirror and see a scared rabbiting thing; sad, and mopey, but it was true. Yuuri’s heart sank. Maybe he’d reached his peak at twenty-two, when he’d been clearheaded and the anxiety hadn’t yet been strong enough to beat out the tooth-and-nail grip he’d had on his dreams, or maybe he’d just never had what it took to be a hero in the first place, but either way he felt like—like—

 _Disappointment. Loser. Failure._ The cruel voice in his head supplied the words for him. And as much as it stung, as much as Yuuri wanted to disagree, he couldn’t. 

No. 

Yuuri took a deep breath. The sadness holed up in his head was more than depressing—it was irritating. It was grating. It _burned_. 

Frustration welled up in his blood. Yuuri drew his throwing knives from their holster, and let that feeling out the best way he knew how.

Fighting had come to him more naturally than anyone—himself included—had ever thought it would. Some time ago Yuuri realized it was because it felt like dancing: the rhythm of battle chorused in his veins like a song, his heartbeat the bass line by which he kept time. From there, everything was easy. It was a matter of finding that rhythm and moving to it. Nothing more, nothing less.

He was out of practice, but the movements came back to him readily. The stillness of the wrist; the steady fingers; the smooth, controlled whip of his arm—it was muscle memory, all of it, and it came back to him like a ghostly dream as he worked. In front of his eyes were dead and dying futures: villains he would never fight, omnics he would never dissemble, grateful smiles he would never return. Yuuri put a knife in the heart of each one of those dreams and felt the thump of blade in soft target body deep in his bones.

When he ran out of throwing knives he dusted off the lone training bot the gym kept and turned it on. It warmed up so slowly Yuuri was afraid it wasn’t going to work—but its battery life looked fine, and once Yuuri gave it a couple of encouraging taps and set it to random perimeter movement it whirred like new. It skated back a few feet, beeped a greeting, and then came cutting in to Yuuri’s left.

Grinning, Yuuri moved to meet it.

The bot was quick. It swooped into close quarters like a huge metal sparrow, swaying delicately as it moved. Yuuri tugged the blades from his backpiece and darted in close to the box of the bot’s chest. He sliced in sideways, and the bot whirled out of reach just in time. Quicker than Yuuri had expected, then; he adjusted his grip, rocked up off his heels, and went after it.

This especially felt like dancing. With flesh-and-blood or metal-and-wiring opponents there was the jarring moment of impact, the followthrough, the occasional pause to free a weapon of socket or joint; with the bot there was only the slice of metal through air and the constant chase-and-flee between them as Yuuri and the bot became hunter and hunted in turn. 

The bot put up a good performance, but Yuuri was running high on adrenaline and yearning, and after what seemed like an hour he snapped out an instinctive side kick that knocked the bot’s lights off. 

Yuuko wasn’t going to be happy if he’d broken it. Wincing, Yuuri knelt at its side. It woke back up when he prompted it, but it was slow. It was an older bot, anyway; Yuuri put it to sleep properly and sat back.

His heart was pounding. His lungs ached. His muscles were hot with what would definitely be soreness in the morning. He felt _good_ —out of shape, sure, but good.

Unbidden, memory surged back in force. He felt good, but compared to the memory of battle that echoed in his blood this was a shade of a feeling; a thin specter, a sheet drawn over the dead. He wanted—more. Needed more. 

In his periphery, something moved.

Between his earlier bout of paranoia and the number of knives currently on his person, Yuuri couldn’t bring himself to panic. He looked over and found the climbing rope, marked every so often with fist-sized knots, swaying gently in what must be the breeze from the air conditioning unit. 

He remembered, suddenly, blur of black and gray and platinum, graceful as a hawk and thrice as deadly. 

Yuuri’s heart lit up. 

Across the gym, a training dummy hung in macabre suspension from one of the ceiling struts. Perfect. Yuuri wiped his palms on his pants, went to the rope, and began to climb. He wasn’t as strong as he’d been this time last year, or even just a few months ago; his shoulders and arms were crying out by the time he got to the top of the rope, and screaming by the time he hauled himself up to the top of the maintenance ladder a few feet down the metal strut the rope was anchored to. All of that faded, though, when he stepped onto the walkway at the top and found his prize waiting.

There, coiled on the walkway and coated in dust, was a cable.

Yuuri rubbed the dust off of it on his pants. Underneath the grit, the cable itself looked fine: steel and supersteel fibers woven together in smooth concordance, no frays or weak spots when Yuuri snapped it taut in a few places. Toward the end of the cable that was anchored to the walkway was a harness hooked up to a drop clip with a digital interface. Yuuri had spent too many hours researching how it worked to have forgotten; he turned it on, checked the settings. They were conservative, which wasn’t surprising: set to slow him down gently and early without ever picking up much speed to begin with on the descent. 

 _Smart_ , said the part of Yuuri that was sensible. _Screw that_ , said the part of Yuuri that yearned for something greater, and crowed as Yuuri set the drop clip to give him three seconds of free fall. It kept crowing as Yuuri stepped into the harness, drew it tight, took off his glasses, and squinted to find his target. It was visible enough for him to be able to hit it, an off-white mass against the gloomy blue-gray gym wall, swaying gently in invitation.

Yuuri drew the blade from his thigh holster and balanced himself on the edge of the walkway. It would be a little different for him. When Legend had done this he’d been hurtling down the side of a skyscraper, taking aim at a helicopter loaded with black market omnic tech on the roof of another building, armed with a slender gun and all the skill in the world. Yuuri remembered the image clear as day, even now: the absolute certainty with which Legend had pitched himself off the building with nothing but a harness and a cable to slow him down, the terrifying grace of his body in motion, how quickly the spin of the rotor blades had become the only movement in the helicopter. 

He thought of Legend, and of himself, and of the feeling fluttering in his chest, wanting to soar. 

He took a breath, and let himself fall. 

Freefall was a blur. There was no time to think. 

Maze of ceiling struts pale gray back wall spot of white—Yuuri cocked his arm back and in one smooth, quick motion, threw. 

The drop clip whirred to life a half-second later. Yuuri’s weight pulled the cable taut; he let his back bow and let the blood rush to his head as he squinted at the dummy. It was swaying, this time not in line with the pattern of the gym’s airflow. Yuuri’s heart leapt into his throat. Had he—? 

His knife was lodged in what looked like the dummy’s abdomen. 

He had. 

Exhilaration seized him. It wasn’t a perfect throw—likely wouldn’t have done much damage in real combat at all—but it was a hit. 

On his back, suspended two feet above the floor, Yuuri allowed himself a moment: a moment to cover his face, a moment to slow his breathing, a moment to feel like maybe not everything was over after all.

By the time Yuuri cooled down and stretched Hasetsu’s understaffed hero administration outpost would probably be closed; but he could look up their hours, he thought, just in case.

 

—

 

Yuuri hated social media. He had never hated anything more. It should have died out in the twenties when it had its chance.

“I’m so, so sorry, Yuuri,” Yuuko said. She looked so upset that it made Yuuri feel a little guilty, even though he was the one who was supposed to be upset—who _was_ upset. “I can’t believe they did this. I— _hey_! _You three_! _Get_ —hold this, Takeshi!” 

The video feed blurred for a moment. When it focused, Nishigori was smiling wryly, rubbing the back of his head. “Sorry, Yuuri. We’ll get them to take it down.” 

It wouldn’t make a difference. He’d turned his phone off after Minako had texted him a screenshot of a video captioned “Japanese hero attempts Legend’s 2066 Move of the Year—but with KNIVES” and then about thirty other messages, all with entirely too many exclamation points and none of which he could read because apparently everyone who had mysteriously forgotten he existed after his last fight had suddenly remembered who he was and wanted to text him nonstop. The only reason Yuuko had been able to reach Yuuri on the telepad was that he’d been about to turn it off when she’d called. 

“It’s fine, Nishigori,” Yuuri mumbled. It was hard to make himself sound unbothered when his head ached the way it did now. He could feel his pulse in his _eyeballs_. “Don’t worry about it.”

“If you say so,” Nishigori said, eyeing him. “I’ll let you go. Get some rest, you don’t look so hot.”

The noise Yuuri made into his pillow wasn’t really classifiable as a word, much less a goodbye, but by the time he felt guilty enough to care Nishigori had already hung up.

Yuuri shut the telepad down, slid it off his bed, and buried his head under both of his pillows. That decided it: he was going to crawl under his bed and fade into obscurity, and no one would ever hear from Katsuki Yuuri again.

 

—

 

On Saturday, Yuuri woke up at ten in the morning to thirty-seven messages and twelve missed calls from Minako. Dread crept up his spine. This was the second time this had happened in the span of a week, and the last time he’d spent the next three days halfway to crawling under his bed staying there forever. He couldn’t imagine this turning out any better.

He opened the very last of Minako’s messages.

 _Victor Nikiforov_ , it read. _Legend. Is here. And you are not here. Where the hell are you?!_  

Victor Nikiforov, Yuuri thought blankly. Legend. 

And then he started to run.

His footsteps echoed off the walls. Mari gave him a startled look at the top of the stairs, and his mother and father made matching bemused noises as he barreled through the front room, but that didn’t matter—none of it did, none of it _could_ , because all there was was a blur and a thunder in Yuuri’s head and the impossible soaring of his heart as he blew through the indoor baths and skidded to a stop on damp stone, breathing clouds into the cold air, searching, searching— _finding._

There.

The word slipped from his mouth. 

“Legend?”

He was undeniably civilian, Yuuri realized, so it probably would have made more sense to call him by his name, but those eyes, that smile, that look, oh— _oh,_ it really was him.

Legend—Victor Nikiforov, living legend, Russia’s national hero and one of the greatest heroes the world itself had seen in years— _Legend_ —smiled a little wider. In English, he said, “Usually when I am this much undressed, I’m called by my real name. But yes.” 

Legend— _Victor_ , Yuuri reminded himself, trying not to panic; _don’t be rude_ —was here, in Yuuri’s family onsen, water glimmering on skin Yuuri had only ever seen glimpses of beneath the contours of those infamous battlesuits. He was here, and that meant—

Yuuri’s heart rabbited. Clenched. Seemed, for a moment, to stop.

Victor was here, and that meant he knew who Yuuri was. Katsuki Yuuri, twenty-three, from Hasetsu, who wore glasses and two-day-old sweatpants and worked at his family’s onsen when he wasn’t training or—as of late—hiding. 

Yuuri’s tongue felt numb. He grasped for the words in English. “Why—why are you here? _How_ are you here? Do you—how do you know who I am?”

“The how isn’t as important as the why, I think,” Victor said. He leaned forward, peeling the damp towel from his head, and rose from the water like some beautiful breaching creature.

Yuuri’s face went hot. Victor was a modern miracle, a flawless combination of aesthetic and practicality: tall and broad-shouldered, perfectly muscled, the lines of him sweeping down into a waist trimmer than even his very nearly skintight gear implied. He had more stomach muscle than Yuuri had ever even dreamed of having, and all of it narrowed into a vee of muscle perched neatly between his hips, and Yuuri was fairly sure that he was going to choke on his own spit in about ten seconds if Victor didn’t do something about how very _naked_ he was. 

Victor himself didn’t seem to mind. He smiled that superstar smile, extended his hand to Yuuri across the water and the distance and the everything between them, _winked_ , and said, “Katsuki Yuuri, I’m going to make you into a hero.”

It started somewhere in Yuuri’s diaphragm. It swelled, and swelled, and _swelled_ , and burst up out of him before he could stop himself. 

" _What_?!"

Victor blinked into the echo of Yuuri's shout. Then, half-frowning, he said, “Well. That is not the reception I was expecting, I must admit.”

If Yuuri had known Victor— _Legend_ —was coming, if ever any of his wildest flights of fancy had allowed him to think, just for the barest moment, that Victor could know he even existed, he would have prepared a banquet himself. As it is, Yuuri had only himself and his stunned adoration and his family home; as it was, he had nothing. 

“I—I’m sorry,” Yuuri said, spreading his hands. They were shaking badly. He made fists, snapped his arms back to his sides, hoped Victor didn’t notice. How could Yuuri properly face his hero if he couldn’t stop _shaking_? “Let me get you a robe. I’ll be right back.”

Victor opened his mouth to say something, but only half a syllable of it found its way to Yuuri’s ears. The rest faded into steam as Yuuri bolted back inside. He sprinted through the baths and barreled into the linen closet and shut himself in it and let out a noise that came back off the walls as a whimper—and then, as his nerves caught up to him, Yuuri sunk into a crouch among cleaning supplies and dust and put his head between his legs to try to breathe. He very carefully did not think of Legend, or of the onsen, or even of home; he very carefully thought of nothing at all, and filled his head up instead with his runaway heartbeat.

After a moment, Yuuri began cataloguing his pulse, his trembling hands, his dry mouth. He took note of his wavering balance and the burn kindling in his thighs as he held this position; he assessed the fact that his feet and palms and—well, everything—were embarrassingly sweaty. By the time he got to making a mental note to file his nails later, his pulse had evened out to its normal twitching pace.

A trial-run thought of Victor, of Legend, only made Yuuri jump a little, which meant he would be fine. Sighing, Yuuri uncurled himself from his crouch, kicking out the stiffness in his legs, found a robe on the shelf that seemed like it would be long enough, and opened the closet door.

“Katsuki Yuuri,” Minako hissed.

Yuuri was so dead.

“Where the hell have you been, damnit? Legend—“ her voice echoed; she lowered it a half-step when Yuuri gave her a wide-eyed look. “Legend is _here_ , in your family’s house, and you just left him alone in the baths? Without even a towel? You are so lucky your mother had extra clean robes, I can’t _believe_ you would leave him out there like that, Yuuri, how—unbelievable,” Minako finished, pink in the face, eyes wild and intent. She looked like she would eat him alive if she could. Yuuri might not put up a fight if she did. It would be a near thing. “What were you _doing_?”

“Getting him a robe.” It was accurate. It was also the least embarrassing way to say _warding off a panic attack_. “I’m sorry, Minako-sensei. I’ll take care of him from here.”

Minako eyed him. “You’d better,” she said, but her eyes and her voice were softer. She didn’t push. Yuuri sagged with relief. “What is he _doing_ here, anyway?” 

_Katsuki Yuuri, I’m going to make you into a hero._

The memory seemed far away, flat like a scenario Yuuri had thought up in his head just to see how it would play out. It didn’t seem real. How could it be? How could Legend—who had taken out more omnics than there were omnics to take out, who hadn’t lost a battle in five years, who was _literally_ a living legend—be in Yuuri’s family home at all, let alone offering to teach him? 

Minako was waiting.

Heart in his throat, Yuuri said, “He’s going to make me into a hero.”

The words felt no more real coming from his mouth than they had from Victor’s. They must have rung hollow to Minako, too, because she gave him a bug-eyed look, took a sharp breath, and pinched her nose. “There were rumors that Legend was thinking of taking on a protege, but…God.” She tipped her head back. “I need a drink.” 

Yuuri felt like he did, too. “That’s what he said,” he said weakly, offering Minako a shrug. “I don’t really know what he’s doing here, either.”

“Ugh,” Minako said. “Well, you’re never going to find out if you keep hiding out in here and being an awful host. Get out there and see what he needs. And let me know when you find out.” Her expression slid into something sly. “Also, is it just me, or is he getting better-looking with age?”

It definitely wasn’t just her. In the water, Victor had been—

Yuuri shook his head. “I’m going to go." 

Minako made aggressive shooing motions in the direction of the house proper. Yuuri scurried off, slipping past her carefully to avoid her sharp fingernails.

When he got to the front room, Victor was there. That in and of itself was already a miracle of impossible circumstance, but that Victor would be there, on the floor, dressed in a loose robe and blinking up at Yuuri—well. That was something else entirely.

Yuuri’s brain stuttered to a halt. 

“There you are,” Victor said. He straightened up a little, bracing himself on one hand. The olive robe he wore slipped down on his shoulder. Yuuri kept his eyes on Victor’s face as he knelt. How far away was too far? How close was too close? “I was beginning to wonder if you’d run away.” 

The tone of his voice was both light and sharp. It was a little bit of a jab, Yuuri realized, and blanched. “S-sorry, I—“

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I met your old teacher—was she your teacher? She said you danced ballet, among other things.”

“Oh.” Yuuri’s face went hot. “Yes, Minako-sensei taught me ballet when I was younger.”

“You moved like you’d been practicing. I wonder—was she the one that taught you to move like you did in that video?”

Yuuri’s heart dropped. “You saw that?”

Victor’s smile widened. It was as lovely as clear-sugar candy, but Yuuri was willing to guess it would taste like arsenic on the tongue. “How do you think I ended up here?”

The how was much more complicated than just the video. How had he recognized Yuuri? How had he found out Yuuri’s real name? His home address? Where he even was?

The how was complicated, and more than just a little frightening. A shiver wormed up Yuuri’s back; he swallowed hard against it and said, “Idon’t know, actually.”

Victor’s brow quirked. “Hmm. Well, I suppose I could explain later. But really: did she teach you to move that way?”

“Sort of.” Yuuri ran his nail along the hem of his shirt. “Some of it was me. I was just…I don’t know. Doing what felt right.”

Victor hummed, long and thoughtful. Like this, with his fingers pressed to his mouth and his eyes the faraway blue of high skies, he was unreadable, unknowable. For a second Yuuri was sure he could spend forever and a day studying even just that expression and never know a thing more than he did now. 

Movement split the moment: Victor raised a finger, bright-eyed, and said, “Good! That means we’ll have something to work with.” 

“Oh,” Yuuri said. Did that mean—? “That’s—“

“But you’ll need to get back in shape, first.”

Victor was still smiling, inscrutable and brilliant. Yuuri looked down at himself. He’d put on some weight in his time at home, but… “Huh?”

“Your training starts tomorrow,” Victor said. “How does six o’clock sound?”

It sounded like heaven; it sounded like hell. But more importantly, Yuuri thought, it sounded like Victor was here to stay. And that—that couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be _real_.

How could Yuuri ask him if he was serious? If he meant what he was saying? How could Yuuri communicate to Victor Nikiforov, to _Legend_ , whom he’d revered ever since he was old enough to understand the concept, that he was simultaneously electric with hope and absolutely terrified? 

There was no way to say it. Yuuri grasped at the thoughts fleeting shapelessly through his head. “Are you—I mean, do you have—“

“Oh, my luggage should be here soon,” Victor said airily, waving a hand. He winked. “Maybe moving it inside will be your first training exercise.”

Training exercise. Yuuri’s first training exercise.

Yuuri’s first training exercise under _Legend_.

Oh, this _definitely_ couldn’t be real.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guns and tigers and feelings, oh my.

Moving Victor’s boxes into his temporary room and finding a place to put food and water bowls for his poodle, Makkachin, was Yuuri’s first billable training exercise, according to Victor. His second was, somehow, talking, though Yuuri was starting to suspect that Victor’s methods of training were less about actually doing what he said they were doing and more about keeping Yuuri on edge by making sure he was always confused and at least slightly worried.

When Yuuri hauled what had to be at least his ninth box into Victor’s makeshift room, he found Victor inspecting the balance of a stack of boxes Yuuri had set up where there was free space, some few feet in from the door. Makkachin had dug one of his toys out of a box and was chewing on it animatedly, though he did pause to give Yuuri his attention. It was odd to see another dog in the house again, let alone Makkachin himself; Yuuri remembered distinctly the day he’d brought Vicchan home for the first time, a tiny carbon copy of Victor Nikiforov’s beloved dog, all high-pitched yips and tiny wet nose shoved into Yuuri’s chin.

Something sweet and sad cracked open in Yuuri’s chest. He smiled at Makkachin, knelt to set down the box in his arms, and held out a sore hand for Makkachin’s inspection. Makkachin belly-crawled closer; looked, sniffed; licked Yuuri’s fingers.

“Good boy,” Yuuri murmured, scratching behind Makkachin’s ear. Huffing, Makkachin leaned into Yuuri’s touch.

“You’re a dog person?”

Yuuri froze. Victor’s voice was soft, unassuming, but Yuuri hadn’t asked before he’d pet Makkachin—maybe he’d misstepped.

“Sorry,” Yuuri said. Makkachin pushed himself to his feet and butted his head against Yuuri’s thigh. “I—used to have a dog, too.”

Victor was quiet. His mouth was hidden behind his fingers, but his eyes were on Makkachin, who was nosing at Yuuri’s hand. Slight furrow of the brow, focus in the gaze; nothing to suggest Victor was angry, but nothing to suggest he was anything otherwise, either. For someone who seemed so open, Victor was jarringly hard to read.

After a moment, Victor said, “Don’t apologize. Makkachin seems to like you.” Behind his fingers, when he lowered them, was a smile. “I was just thinking that we should get to know each other.”

Yuuri blinked. “What do you mean?”

Victor shrugged. The green robe moved with him. His collarbones winged delicately. For the second time—maybe third?—Yuuri’s eyes caught on that smooth expanse of skin. Victor had been operating as Legend for at least a decade, and training for it longer than that. How could he have no scars? No bruises? “I mean what I said.”

That didn’t help at all. Was this some sort of joke designed to test Yuuri’s sense of reality? Or was Victor serious?

“Yuuri.”

Touch, warm and soft, on Yuuri’s hand, on his face. Victor knelt, drew his fingers along the soft vulnerable underside of Yuuri’s jaw, and took Yuuri’s chin in his fingers. He nudged upwards, and Yuuri moved with the pressure of it, tilting his face up until he and Victor were in intimate parallel.

The world faded at the edges, and in turn Victor’s face came into perfect focus: the delicate lashes, the high cheekbones, the graceful dip of his cupid’s-bow mouth.

_Oh_ , said Yuuri’s brain, dreamy and slow. Then: _Never bare your throa_ t. And after that still: _Not even for Legend?_

“I want to know you,” Victor murmured. His eyes were soft. Intent. Yuuri’s heart twisted. “I know you have questions. I have them too. We should…talk.”

Victor’s fingers pressed against Yuuri’s palm, against his wrist. His touch was light over the thin skin there, but it felt as loaded as a blade. From this distance Yuuri could smell him; could feel the ghost of his body heat; could almost imagine, for the most fleeting of seconds, that Victor was looking at him with something other than simple curiosity, something softer, something—

Alarm bells clanged in Yuuri’s head. Victor was close, too close—and then Yuuri was on his ass, back against a wall, and Victor was twenty feet away, wide-eyed and confused.

“What?” Victor blinked at him. “Why are you running away?”

_Why are you running away?_ , Victor Nikiforov, callsign Legend, one of the greatest heroes the world had ever seen, was asking. Was asking _him_ —Katsuki Yuuri, twenty-three, from sleepy small-town Hasetsu, one of the dime-a-dozen certified heroes in Japan and not even the best among them. Understanding slid out of Yuuri’s grasp like a fish through wet hands.

“I,” Yuuri heard himself say, “I have to—I have to go do something! Bye!”

“Yuuri,” Victor began, lifting those clever fingers in what seemed like Yuuri’s direction—but it couldn’t possibly be, could it? What would Victor want with him like that, so close Yuuri’s heart still felt like it might beat out of his chest?

Victor opened his mouth.

Yuuri ran.

\--

The rest of that day was spent dancing around Victor. Yuuri kept his head low and his eyes lower, though no amount of awkward demurring could keep heat from flooding his cheeks whenever Victor spoke to him, or came to close to him, or looked at him, or—well, anything, really. He listened over dinner when Victor outlined the vague concept of what might have been a training plan for tomorrow, bid Victor goodnight afterward, and wandered off to bathe with the odd numb feeling that he might wake up in the morning and find that this had all been some whirlwind of a dream.

Yuuri collapsed into bed later than usual that night. Tiredness evicted whatever energy he had left from his bones and sunk in instead, pinning Yuuri to the mattress. Somehow a day spent running around for or from Victor was more tiring than any day he’d spent training recently—though, Yuuri supposed, most training sessions didn’t also involve his idol asking him what he usually ate for dinner, or what his favorite running route was, or if they could get to know each other.

A half-laugh escaped him. A year ago the idea of Victor Nikiforov asking Yuuri if they could get to know each other would have been a pipe dream. It still seemed that way now, even though Yuuri remembered perfectly the phantom pressure of Victor’s fingers on his chin and on his hand; the look in Victor’s eyes and the low angle of his lashes; the way Victor had come so close like there was nothing between them, like entire worlds didn’t separate the two of them.

He’d made it out of that room in one piece; but here, in the unasking echo chamber of his room where he had thought of Victor—of Legend—so many times before, Yuuri was sure he’d left some part of himself behind. Whichever part of him was responsible for keeping him from feeling like he was going to fly apart at the seams was gone, and in its absence Yuuri bubbled over, trembling like a hummingbird where he lay. It was such an odd feeling, this full-body brightness, that for a moment he couldn’t place it.

When a smile shaped his lips unbidden, though, he knew.

It was happiness, clear as a bell.

\--

It took Yuuri a solid two days of mortification to look Victor anywhere close to in the eye after that, but Victor was good about it, as he turned out to be about most things, and for the first two weeks after Victor yanked the tablecloth out from under Yuuri’s life, things were good. Not normal, because Yuuri didn’t think that anything involving Victor Nikiforov within even one hundred feet of him could ever be considered normal, but good. Slowly but surely Yuuri’s morning runs to the gym began to seem less like a self-defeating form of stalling; his diet--when Victor finally stopped requesting katsudon for every meal--was nearly agreeable; and training, while harder than almost anything he’d ever done in his life, started to feel good again, even though Victor had issued a no-weapons mandate until Yuuri was back in fighting shape.

"You can have your gear back when you're quick enough to use it properly," Victor had said, smiling sunnily, and Yuuri had grit his teeth and gotten to work.

By the beginning of the third week of what Victor called _light training_ and Yuuri called _hell_ , Yuuri could almost feel the weight of his favorite knife again, ghostly as it was. He clung to that memory as he pounded up the stairs to the gym on a gray Friday morning fifteen minutes after he waved goodbye to his mother, his breathing even, his pace measured. Maybe today would be the day Victor let him gear up again. Maybe—

Pain.

A blow to the back. Concrete hard on palms and knees. Adrenaline and fear bursting cold in his blood. Instinct took over: Yuuri let his momentum roll him forward, got his feet underneath himself, and sprang up, hands in front of his face. Through the frame of them he found his attacker--and stopped.

It would be hard in this day and age not to know who Yuri Plisetsky was, even if you only peripherally paid attention to hero culture. Fifteen years old, all gunmetal and growl, fierce as a tiger and half the size, Yuri Plisetsky, callsign Tiger, was destined for greatness. It was in his eyes.

Fury was in his eyes, too. His face twisted, sharp and mean, and as Yuuri lowered his fists he snapped, “You’re the dumbass Victor ran off to train?”

Even without weaponry he was frightening, like a butterfly knife in motion. Danger, said Yuuri’s instincts. He swallowed. “Um. Yes. What—?”

“I remember you,” Plisetsky interrupted.

Yuuri’s mind went blank. As far as he could remember they hadn’t met, which meant Plisetsky knew him from elsewhere. The options were narrow: Yuuri had never received much coverage from international stations, except—

Oh.

Yuuri’s face went hot.

Plisetsky sneered. “Pathetic. I don’t know why Victor is wasting his time here instead of training seriously. What are you doing?”

“I—what?”

“What are you doing,” Plisetsky repeated, eyes narrowing, “with him? With Legend?” He spat the word out. Looked Yuuri up and down. Snapped, “You’re not even armed. I could have killed you.”

There wasn’t a way to say _I’m not allowed to train with weapons until Victor’s satisfied with my physical condition_ without sounding about as inept as Plisetsky clearly thought he was. Still, Yuuri frowned. He had clung to life in worse situations before; a single blow to the back wouldn’t have thrown him off enough to give Plisetsky a lethal advantage. Besides, it seemed Plisetsky knew who he was, which meant he knew that getting close enough for a kick put him inside Yuuri’s preferred combat range. And if he knew that, then why did he still look so at ease?

The angle of Plisetsky’s chin was arrogant, derisive. There was no regard in his eyes, no semblance of the wariness that usually came with this sort of hostility; only scorn and irritation. Hands in his pockets, weight rocked back on one heel, no visible armor—Plisetsky didn’t see him as a threat.

_Ah_ , Yuuri thought, with an odd, particular curl of satisfaction. _He’s underestimating me_.

A smile tugged at his lips. Plisetsky caught it before Yuuri could stop himself.

“Don’t smirk at me, you pig bastard,” he snapped, jabbing a finger in Yuuri’s direction. “The world still thinks it needs him. Are you going to hole up here with him and let him waste the rest of his active years trying to make you into something?”

There were things that could hurt Yuuri, and then there were things that could not. This stung, but logic, rational and cool, let Plisetsky’s words roll off of Yuuri like water. He didn’t know what Yuuri was capable of, didn’t know what Yuuri was determined to make himself capable of—and besides, Yuuri reminded himself, Victor was here of his own volition, regardless of the reason. He had come to Hasetsu for Yuuri, and that was why he was still here.

A spark of something like pride warmed Yuuri’s chest. Victor had come to Hasetsu for him. That was enough.

Yuuri met Plisetsky’s eyes. “Ask him yourself,” he said, and turned his back.

Behind him, Plisetsky spat out a noise like a choked-off snarl. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

The hair on the back of Yuuri’s neck stood up. Basic instinct told him that putting a very angry and very lethal person out of his line of sight was a bad idea, but the bit of pride that still burned in his chest said, _screw it_.

Yuuri turned over his shoulder. In his periphery, Plisetsky was all bared teeth and clenched fists. Ruffled and spitting like that, he looked more like an angry kitten than anything. Yuuri smiled.

“To train.” Then, shrugging, he added, “You won’t find Victor out here. He’s in the gym.”

More angry sputtering—then, after a moment, the heavy sound of stomping followed Yuuri down the hallway to the gym.

Victor was sprawled out on the ground near the training dummies, bending into an easy stretch over his left leg. He flashed Yuuri a steady, beaming smile, pulled his toes toward his head, and said, “Yuuri! You’re early.”

Yesterday he’d been late. The look on Victor’s face had been benign but terrifying. A chill crawled up Yuuri’s spine. “Yeah,” he said, forcing a smile. Behind him the stomping grew louder; wincing, Yuuri jerked a thumb over his shoulder and said, “Uh, there’s—“

The door blew open.

“There you are,” Plisetsky growled. “Where the hell have you been?”

Victor paused. Blinked. Brightened. “Yuri! What are you doing here?”

Plisetsky stormed past Yuuri, and Victor unfolded himself gracefully and sat up, leaning back on his hands, smiling like he couldn’t feel any of the malice rolling off Plisetsky in waves. Yuuri could feel it across the twenty feet that separated them now—Victor must have been able to, as close as they were with Plisetsky's bright sneakers just a few feet from Victor’s outstretched legs. It was in the curve of his spine, the tenseness of his shoulders, the weight of his glare: Plisetsky was angry, but not angry enough to get into Victor’s space the way he had with Yuuri. Was it familiarity? Or was it respect?

“Looking for you,” Plisetsky ground out. His jaw was so tense Yuuri wasn’t sure how he could speak. “Answer my question. Where the hell have you been?”

Victor looked at Plisetsky. Looked at Yuuri. Looked around the room. “Here?”

“I know that, but what the hell are you _doing_?”

Another long look around the room. Underneath the guileless flutter of Victor’s eyelashes was something sharp-edged and clever. Teasing. Yuuri bit his lip and kept quiet. “Training.”

“You—I’m asking what you’re doing here with this _pig_!”

Victor blinked up at Plisetsky. “Wow,” he said, like he hadn’t just called Yuuri the same thing last week. “Someone isn’t in a good mood.”

“No shit. No one is—especially not Yakov. Get your shit, Nikiforov. We’re going home.”

Home.

Victor had been living with Yuuri for the past few weeks, and he’d adjusted to Hasetsu nicely; he liked the beach, the sake, the food Yuuri’s mother plied him with whenever she saw him. Hasetsu had welcomed Victor with open arms and let him become the vibrant spark in the midst of their sleepy seaside huddle, and Victor had sunk into it as easy as breathing. He wore that green robe still and went barefoot around Yuuri’s house and was learning how to sit seiza and all of that tentative new comfort could vanish in the blink of an eye, right here, right now.

Yuuri’s stomach went tight. Panic crowded his chest, his head. Victor wasn’t his, didn’t belong to Yuuri or Hasetsu or this life, but Yuuri had begun to get used to him nonetheless. The learning curve was slow, but already the constant company and the sound of Victor’s laugh were becoming everyday, as simple and as easy as waking up in the morning and going to train. Now that Yuuri knew this--the taste of something like hope, the feeling of shaking off months of stagnation--how could he go back?

With his fingers over his mouth, Victor’s expression was unreadable. All Yuuri could see were his eyes, that odd faraway blue, cutting from Plisetsky to Yuuri and back again, like he was weighing his options.

Of course, Yuuri thought. A fresh wave of misery, all the more potent for how unfamiliar it had become, washed over him. Plisetsky had talent, had instincts, had _potential_ in spades. It only made sense for Victor to invest his time and his effort into someone with a future in being a hero.

Still, Yuuri ached.

After a long, dragging moment, Victor raised a finger. “Okay. I've decided.”

Plisetsky made a disgruntled noise. Yuuri’s heart twisted. The world hung, suspended, from that single slender finger.

Victor grinned. “I’ll train both of you!”

“Wh—“

“ _What_?”

Victor laughed. It was an impossibly clear sound. “You both look ridiculous,” he said, crinkling his eyes up at Plisetsky. From the corner of his eye he flashed Yuuri that was by now familiar: a reprimand disguised as a tease. “Don’t be so startled. I am more than capable of training both of you at the same time.”

“You aren’t even capable of remembering a promise,” Plisetsky spat. His shoulders were rounded, hunched. Yuuri had seen that look on cornered animals before. “Why would you expect me to think you could train me and this pig at the same time?”

Victor’s mouth dipped into a mournful moue. “So cruel,” he murmured, reclining. “What an awful thing to say.”

Plisetsky sucked in a breath and traded it out for a curse in Russian. “It’s true, and you know it.”

“If it’s true, you won’t mind proving me wrong,” Victor said.

“What?”

“Train with us.” Victor tilted his head. “If you’re right about my abilities as a teacher, I’ll go back to Russia with you. If not…” He spread his hands. Shrugged.

Plisetsky bristled. “How are you gonna judge that?”

“What about a duel?”

“ _What_?”

Plisetsky and Victor turned as one. The combined weight of their gazes was daunting. Cringing, Yuuri took a step back and said, “I mean…what do you mean, ‘duel’?”

“In the most thrilling sense, of course. At the end of your training you and Yuri will compete to see who has put my teaching to better use." Victor's smile widened. His eyes were bright. "Isn't that exciting?"

Plisetsky gave Yuuri a once-over, then turned back to Victor with a shrug. “And when I beat him, you’ll come back to Russia?”

Victor shrugged back. “If that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want,” Plisetsky said. “How long? Two weeks?”

“If you think that sufficient.”

“It’s fine for me.” Plisetsky shot Yuuri a blistering look and added, “It will work for the pig too.”

Between the two of them Yuuri was going to end up with some sort of complex. He spread his hands. “It doesn’t seem like I have a choice, does it?”

“No,” Plisetsky said. At the same time, Victor clapped his hands and said, “Wonderful! It’s settled. Let’s get to training, then, shall we?”

Plisetsky paused. “Right now?”

Adrenaline bolted through Yuuri’s veins. Not the usual pre-training adrenaline, but rather the kind that made his nerves fray and his head buzz with bad thoughts.

It was fear, Yuuri realized. He was afraid.

He swallowed it down. Plisetsky was a good fighter, but so was he. Yuuri could--would--hold his own.

Yuuri shook his head. Rolled his shoulders. Took a breath.

Then, he said, “Unless you just want to watch," and set his backpack down to take out his gear.

Plisetsky stared. For a moment he was still, eyes wide, fists clenched, drawn up to his full height--and then he threw down his backpack, too, and dropped down beside it, muttering under his breath. Victor clapped, laughing, and said, "That's the spirit, Yuri!"

Yuuri blew out a sigh. For a moment he was hollow, his chest a cage at whose bars anxiety rattled--but in its wake, resolve welled up. This wouldn’t be easy—but if beating Plisetsky meant he could have Victor for a little longer, it was a bargain Yuuri was more than willing to make.

 -- 

Despite the interruption, life returned to somewhat normal—for whatever value of normal it could possibly achieve when Victor Nikiforov was involved—after Plisetsky arrived. He stomped his way back home with Victor and Yuuri after training that first night, demanded a room, and, surprisingly enough, provided entertainment by looking like the physical embodiment of curdled milk when Mari called him _Yurio_ to avoid confusion between him and Yuuri. He protested the nickname with what Yuuri came to recognize was slightly less than his usual amount of venom, but answered to it when Mari talked to him, and when Victor instructed him, and even when Yuuri called him that, too, when they talked.

They didn’t talk often, though; probably less than two people sharing the same trainer usually did, and less than Yuuri thought they probably should. Talking to Yurio wasn’t a walk in the park by any means—but training was hard, and the days were long, and despite that open face and easy eyes Victor wasn’t exactly easy to talk to sometimes. Yurio could use someone to talk to, even if he didn’t think he could.

Case in point: today’s training.

Victor was infinitely capable when it came to battle. In the thick of things he was a whirlwind, skill and talent and natural clever instinct spun together into a precise force as terrifying as nature, as death. Battle made Victor beautiful. Once upon a time Yuuri had thought he looked almost like an angel, back when Victor’s hair had streamed behind him like a platinum pennant and the lines under his eyes hadn’t been quite so deep, when being a hero hadn’t yet begun to taste like blood and gunmetal in Yuuri’s mouth.

But as a trainer Victor was frustrating, to say the least. He could explain the physical aspects of most things—how to hold yourself so you were always ready to spring into motion, how to predict and counter a sucker punch, how to feint with your eyes—but when it came to laying out concepts, he was vague at best. Over the weeks Yuuri had grown used to the way Victor liked to talk in circles about how to synchronize body with mind and fight with your heart, but Yurio had started to look like his nerves were fraying around day three, and it hadn’t gotten much better since.

Today Victor had spun the wheel of abstract ideas and landed on motivation. “What do you fight for?” he’d asked as Yuuri danced, bare-handed, with a speedy little bot Victor had ordered for the gym last week. Victor had told him to keep his awareness piqued all the way to the furthest reaches of his periphery; now that awareness awarded Yuuri a glimpse of Yurio with a gun in each hand, firing simultaneous silenced blanks at target dummies. On his face was a grimace wound so tightly it looked like it might break his jaw. “What do you defend? Who?”

The uneven rhythm of bullet in soft target body lapsed. Yurio had missed a target. He rounded on Victor, guns down, and snapped, “What the hell are you talking about, old man?”

Yuuri let the bot in close enough to wrangle it by the neck and pause its movement. It went still, whirring into sleep, and Yuuri watched Victor touch his fingers to his chin and reply, “It’s the lesson of the day, Yurio. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“How can I focus on anything else when you keep blabbering about _feelings_?”

Victor flashed a winning smile. “Well, that’s the point, you see. It’s a dual training exercise: you learn to focus through distractions and get a valuable lesson at the same time. It’s brilliant, really.”

“It’s _bullshit_ ,” Yurio countered. He would be waving his arms if he could; Yuuri had already learned to stay out of swinging range when Yurio was ticked off. “What is any of that even supposed to mean?”

“Well.” Again that impenetrable smile. “Maybe you should take a break. Get some water, cool off. Think about what I’ve said. I think you’ll see it’s helpful.”

“I’m not gonna see shit,” Yurio muttered, but breezed past Victor to the far wall of the gym, where their bags and water bottles lay.

In his wake, Victor turned to Yuuri and inclined his head in the direction Yurio had gone. Sugar-sweet and smiling, he added, “You should take a break too, Yuuri, since you’re already just standing around.”

That was one of the cooler versions of Victor’s smile. Yuuri snapped out a yes and headed over to the wall. Leaning against the cement wall, Yurio was grumbling to himself like he’d never quite stopped—which, knowing him, he probably hadn’t. “That geezer thinks he knows what he’s doing. He’s a shitty trainer. Who the hell cares about shit like that?”

Yuuri swallowed a mouthful of water. “I don’t know,” he offered. The weight of Yurio’s glare was immediate, but it had been four days since he'd come to Hasetsu, and Yuuri was made of sturdier stuff than he was sure Yurio had realized. He shrugged and added, “I think motivation is important.”

“Of course you do,” Yurio sneered. He tossed his head, sent blond hair and drops of sweat flying. “Tell me, pig: what motivates you to get your ass kicked?”

For honor, for glory, for peace, for war; heroes usually ran that particular gamut in post-battle interviews and press releases and glamorous editorials, but Yuuri held his motivation closer to his breast. The things he fought for were simple: the sake of his pride; the love of being a hero; the child he'd once been and the parts of that child that still lived in him today; the honor—the joy, the opportunity, the chance—to fight on the same battlefield as Legend.

He’d thought about those things a year ago—less, actually, a matter of months, as he lay in bed with phantom blood under his tongue and panic in his chest. What had he been fighting for? What had he lost? The sad soft parts of him had said _yourself, your worth, your dignity_ , said, _you can’t save that anxious little boy no matter how hard you tr_ y; but the part of him that bent but never broke said _think about this later_ and _this too will pass_ and _next time, next time, next time_.

It had been a while since Yuuri had thought about that—but now was as good a time as ever to revisit it, he supposed.

“You don’t actually want me to tell you,” Yuuri said. Yurio’s expression went briefly soft before snarling up again. “But no matter what my reasons are, that kind of thing is important, isn’t it? To have a reason to fight, or to keep living?”

Yurio snorted. “Hell no. What does it matter why I fight as long as I do? I’m good at what I do. I’m a good hero—better than ones who rely on feelings for motivation.”

He wasn’t wrong, Yuuri mused. Emotion could run dry and motivation could weaken, but training was woven into the bones; it would never fail you.

What was his weakness, then? When his head went fuzzy and panic seized him by the throat—was it training that failed Yuuri then? Or was it just him?

A brisk clap snapped the air. “What a long water break!” Victor called out. “Are you both actually that tired already or are you just slacking off?”

Yurio made a choked noise and slammed down his water bottle. “Bastard,” he mumbled, though about whom Yuuri wasn’t sure who, and spun on his heel in a flurry of blond hair and sharp elbows to head back to where Victor stood, stretching idly.

If there was one thing Yuuri had learned about Yurio already, it was that he was always ready: prepared to stop on a dime, to drop everything, to fight whenever he was needed. There was an eagerness in him that was almost frightening in its pitch. No wonder he was as good as he was: Yurio couldn’t stagnate. He didn’t know how. It wasn’t in his nature.

For a moment jealousy rubbed Yuuri raw, but it was a fleeting thing. Yuuri knew himself, his strengths and his weaknesses, and knew them all intimately and well; he knew where he fell short, and where he would never— _could_ never—fall short again.

Yurio had determination—but Yuuri did, too. And that was what would keep Yuuri going.

They were waiting for him: Victor beaming that line-straddler of a smile that said Yuuri was going to earn himself an extra hour of training if he didn’t hurry up, Yurio wearing what Yuuri was coming to recognize as his signature scowl in a lovely shade of _hurry up, you pig bastard_. A pull and a push.

Yuuri put down his water bottle and jogged back to them.

\--

Down time was a luxury of sorts. When Yuuri had been training in Detroit the routine had always been the same: wake up, train, eat, train, eat, shower, sleep. Time had run on a small, tight loop that allowed no time for fun or for family or even for thought.

In Hasetsu things were different; in Hasetsu Yuuri could soak in the bath and stretch himself sore and lax before sitting down for dinner with Victor across from him and Yurio beside him and his mother bustling around in the background, throwing Yuuri soft little smiles that cut through to the softest parts of him like a knife through air. Things were hard still—training with Victor was grueling, and it had become even more so with the addition of Yurio—but some things, like sitting on the floor of his bedroom with Makkachin’s nose pressed into his leg as he scrolled through social media, were easy.

_Legend Missing from Action_ , read a headline from a U.S.-based newspaper. From a Japanese paper: _Will Legend’s Sudden Disappearance Have a Ripple Effect?_ From a tabloid: _Living Legend and Renowned Hero Victor Nikiforov out of the Limelight—and in Love?_

The tabloid article took long enough to load for Yuuri to regret opening it in the meantime. On the other end, it read, _Victor Nikiforov, also known by his callsign, Legend, is a hottie in the streets and in the sheets. Now, that’s all hearsay—unfortunately for our staff!—but we have it on good authority that Legend is still single and mingling. But with our hero out of action, we have to ask—is there someone waiting for him at home? Rumor has it Nikiforov recently booked a trip to an exotic destination. Could he be shacking up with a new heroine?_

American tabloids were, as always, garbage. Yuuri closed out of the article and went back to his feed, but heat still climbed all the way up to his ears. Shacking up with a heroine—what a ridiculous assumption to make, especially when the truth was that he was doing nothing of the sort. Victor wasn’t on some irresponsible romantic getaway; he was in Hasetsu, training Yuuri most of the time and living in what could arguably be called the lap of small-town luxury the rest.

Though, framed like that, the truth of it was just as ridiculous as that tabloid story. Huh.

Makkachin huffed out a hot breath against Yuuri’s leg. Yuuri smiled, gave Makkachin a quiet apology, and picked up petting him again, winding the long curls behind Makkachin’s ears around his finger. “It’s a good thing you aren’t in the spotlight all the time,” Yuuri told him. Makkachin looked up at him, wide-eyed. “You’re too cute. You would end up with a big head.”

Makkachin whuffled in agreement. He rearranged himself with his chin on Yuuri’s thigh, looking between Yuuri’s face and the idle movement of his thumb over his phone screen. Yuuri tilted his phone in Makkachin’s direction so he could see.

“It’s a good thing you can’t read, either,” Yuuri added. “This stuff is terrible. They don’t know Victor at all.”

“Boof,” Makkachin said, and stretched to lick Yuuri’s wrist. Like this, quiet and easily affectionate, he reminded Yuuri of Vicchan. It was nice, Yuuri thought with a pang of something nostalgic and still-tender, to have a dog in the house again. And though admitting it even just to himself made Yuuri’s face go warm, it was nice having Victor around, too.

Yuuri darkened the screen of his phone and put it down to cup Makkachin’s face in both hands and give him the kind of wide, enthusiastic smile that had always made Vicchan perk up and yip. It didn’t fail now: Makkachin gave Yuuri a big dopey dog smile, bobbing his head until Yuuri squished his face and told him he was a good boy.

Beneath the sound of Makkachin’s heavy breathing and the rhythm of his tail hitting the floor, there was another sound: lighter, sharper, a one-two noise from the doorway.

_Threat?_ asked Yuuri’s subconscious.

_Knock_ , his rational brain answered, and when Yuuri turned to confirm, Victor was there, looking down at the two of them, brows raised.

“Oh, Makkachin. I didn’t realize he was with you, Yuuri.”

Victor’s fingers curled gracefully around the doorframe. He paused there, caught midstep with his weight on one leg, a still from a glossy casual-chic photoshoot right there in Yuuri’s doorway. Not for the first time it struck Yuuri that Victor was beautiful both in and out of motion: his long, slim lines; his easy elegance; the way he smiled, soft and private, like Yuuri had done something to earn it.

Makkachin’s tail thumped against the floor. Warm with embarrassment, Yuuri let Makkachin’s face go. “Um, sorry. Were you looking for Makkachin?”

“No, actually,” Victor said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

It had been three weeks, but three weeks wasn’t nearly enough time for Yuuri to stop being stunned by something so simple as Victor Nikiforov looking for him.

“Oh,” Yuuri said after a moment. “You were? Why?”

“I have something for you.”

“You do? Oh, you didn’t have to…What is it?”

Victor tipped his head in the direction of his room. His eyes were steady. Unreadable. “Come with me.”

There was no question in Victor’s voice; there was no question in Yuuri’s mind. Yuuri stood and followed.

Victor hadn’t yet unpacked some of the boxes from Russia, though Yuuri was fairly sure that was because he himself hadn’t had time to help Victor do it between training and sleeping. The five that were left were huddled up in one corner of his room now, and each of them was open. Yurio, rattling around in the clanking innards of the box furthest from the door, gave them both a greeting scowl when they stopped in the doorway.

“Take a look.” Victor gestured toward the boxes. “You and Yurio will need upgraded weaponry soon enough, but in the meantime I think you should both be training with some of my old tools. It might help you think a little more creatively.”

“Pfft,” said Yurio, and popped a case of bullets out of the box. “These are like, two years old. You think you’re going to make me think more creatively with this?”

“Keep looking,” Victor told him, flashing that impenetrable shield of a smile. “You’ll find something. You too, Yuuri. Go ahead.”

Somewhere thirteen-year-old Yuuri was weeping in joy. Here, Yuuri pared his emotions down to a single sharp stab of happiness, bit the inside of his cheek, and went to look through the nearest box.

It was full of old battle suit specs, mostly, but the one next to it was a gold mine: there was a case of what looked like syringes, a case of gold bullets, and finally a case of something that felt right in his hands when he turned it over. Curious, Yuuri cracked the latches and opened the case and—oh.

Somewhere hazy, Victor shifted. “Did you find something interesting, Yuuri?”

“This was…” Beautiful. Lovely. Inside the case, snug in its black foam bed, was a gun Yuuri recognized right away: sleek and dark and smart, a compact and deadly thing small enough to wield deftly but big enough to pack one hell of a pop.

“Yes?”

“This was your weapon of choice in 2056.” Yuuri could see it now: the way Victor had handled this blaster like it had been an extension of his arm; the way he’d absorbed the recoil like it had been nothing more than a gentle tap; the absolute confidence with which he’d fired every time. How sure Victor had been, like he’d never even considered that his shots might miss. “You took out five omnics in a single shot with this gun.”

The metal carried a faint ghostly warmth, an echo of a kill. Yuuri checked to make sure it wasn’t loaded and then fit his hand to it, curling his fingers around the shaft of the grip. Beautiful heft, beautiful girth; Victor’s hands were bigger, but Yuuri could handle it just fine.

“Do you like it?”

Victor was watching him handle the gun. Heat burst in Yuuri’s cheeks. “I do,” he said, “but I…I’ve never really been good with guns.”

“Oh?” Victor’s voice curled warmly. “You look like you know your way around it.”

The heat in Yuuri’s cheeks began to drip down his neck. He looked at the gun; looked at Victor, at his eyes and the murky intent they held; looked at his hands. “Oh, I—they’re not my style. I’m more comfortable with knives.”

“All the more reason for you to take it.”

“Really?” The word burst too-sharp from Yuuri’s mouth. Yurio snapped out a reprimand; Yuuri chewed on the inside of his cheek and tried again. “I couldn’t…”

“You’ll learn.”

“I—“

There was a sweep of movement at the height of Yuuri’s vision—and then Victor knelt in front of him, cupping Yuuri’s hands in his own.

Victor’s touch was as light as the air in the room itself; a hint of warmth, of pressure, but not much more. He flitted his thumb over the ridges of Yuuri’s thumb, drew it across the grip, swept up along the barrel. “This—“ and his eyes were intent, they were focused, they were soft grasping blue “—is how you will surprise people. How you will surprise your enemies.”

His words had the particular weighty lightness of a death veil. Yuuri’s heart raced.

“You cannot be predictable in battle,” Victor said. He held Yuuri’s gaze. Held Yuuri’s hands. “If you become predictable, you will die.”

Blood and heat and metal and fear like a drum fear like a bell fear like—

Yurio’s laugh cut through the space between them. “So dramatic,” he said, and swung a gleaming hard-light dagger through the air. “I didn’t know you had one of these, Nikiforov. I’ve never seen you use it.”

Victor looked away. Darted a smile at Yurio. “I have never needed to. No enemy has ever gotten close enough to me that I had to draw a blade.”

“Ugh.” Sneering, Yurio waved the blade in Victor’s direction. “Show-off bastard.”

“The truth is the truth.” There was that inscrutable smile again. “Is that what you’re picking, Yurio? You know you’ll have to train with that from now on.”

“Ugh—no, I’m not done looking yet. Bother the pig, will you?”

Victor lifted his hands to wave them at Yurio. In their wake the places where he’d touched Yuuri were cold. “Of course, of course, take your time.” He turned back to Yuuri, then, and dealt him a quick clever look from under lashes like platinum silk. “Have you decided, Yuuri?”

The gun fit Yuuri’s hands like a dream. It was a dream, almost—a hazy gossamer recollection of Victor, of battle, of success as natural as rain; a thing right out of memory.

“Yes,” Yuuri said, and he knew like he knew blood, like he knew bone, like he knew the weight of a knife, that it was right.

\--

There were some things Yuuri knew. The realm of possibility was infinitely familiar to him: he'd spent years honing the skills he had to a fine point; years figuring out how far he could push himself; and even longer than that looking across the gap between where he was and where he sometimes let himself dream he could be, the gap between him and Legend.

When Victor came to Hasetsu, everything Yuuri had ever thought possible had been turned upside down. It was, Yuuri knew, a once in a lifetime sort of thing, the stuff of at-least-local legends. That kind of life-changing event—phenomenon, really—happens the way shooting stars happen: once, if you're lucky, and then never again.

On one June morning, it happens again.

**Author's Note:**

> At any given point in time you can probably find me being wildly self-indulgent on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/yuurivevo) and/or [tumblr](http://kurodai.co.vu/).


End file.
